


Cretaceous Casserole

by pirategirljack



Category: 12 Monkeys (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Smut, Time Travel, request, stranded in time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 08:59:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4700039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirategirljack/pseuds/pirategirljack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ohgress wanted Cole and Cassie stuck in the Cretaceous to work on their relationship, so that's what she gets! I'm breaking it into three parts because it got long, but it's actually all one thing. Starts safe, gets smutty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ohgress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ohgress/gifts).



Day 1:

Apparently, a trip to the Cretaceous takes a lot longer than a trip a few decades back. A LOT longer. And it hurts. This one wasn’t supposed to be a trip to the Cretaceous of course, but apparently when they added the second seat to the Machine, it threw something way off, and Cole and Cassie landed, hard–but together--in some place not at all where they were aiming.

"What the fff..." Cole said half into the ground as he tried to regain the use of his limbs. He scrabbled up onto his knees and shook his head, and it was still a few more heartbeats before he realized that Cassie was there, too, and rushed to her. As much as he could rush, when every nerve hurt like this.

She was face down in the mulch, but she was breathing, and, thankfully, looked more pissed off than anything else when he got her rolled over. Pissed, he could deal with.

"Where are we?" She said. Cole helped her sit up and pushed her hair back and tried not to let his hands linger on her too much. She hadn’t been much one for touching since she came back from the future. "We were aiming for the 70s."

"Not where we meant to be. No sign of people that I can see. And--" He sniffed, took a deep breath, "--the air smells different. Like the balance is off. The...chemicals or something."

A noise in the distance, and they both brought their heads up, trying to locate it, to identify it. Then a rustle in the shrubs nearby.

Cassie reached for her hip, where her gun should have been, and her hand found nothing. She looked around, frantic, but if it was here, it was hidden under all the leaves, and who knew where it was. Cole's hand on her shoulder brought her attention back to the bushes.

"What the hell?" He said, half under his breath. "What the hell is that?"

Small, but armored and clawed, with teeth and sharp eyes. She knew it from every movie of her childhood, practically. "That's a dinosaur."

"This is not the 70s."

They ran.

Thankfully, the creature startled at their sudden movements and didn't follow them, but now they were God knows how far away from the place they landed, with no supplies, no idea where to get any, and an undetermined length of stay.

\---  
Day 4:

"We were supposed to be gone a few days," Cassie said, "we were not supposed to be stranded in the Cretaceous. How long did you stay last time you were in the wrong place?"

"In Korea, just a few minutes--long enough to get roughed up. In 2017--two weeks." He clammed up when he remembered that trip, swallowed, focused on arranging some fallen wood into a pile. "I thought I wasn't coming back from that one."

"So we wait for Jones to...retrieve us?"

"She calls it a slingshot. That's probably what she'll do, kick us sideways into where we're supposed to be without taking us home first, because it’ll use less power. Cause less wear and tear on the Machine. But this..." He looked around the full circle of what they could see between the trees, "This is way further than I've ever gone. Shouldn’t have even been possible. Anyone who maybe came this far? They didn't come back to talk about it."

"So we just sit around and wait to die?" Her voice was sharper than she'd intended it to be, but she knew the anger covered rising panic, and she saw that he knew, too. 

"No, we survive."


	2. Chapter 2

Day 15:

"It's been two weeks," Cassie said. "Two weeks. I don't think we're getting out of here."

"Jones'll figure something out." Cole poked at the fire and added a handful of twigs, watched them catch and crackle for a while. It was his job to tend the fire; he’d done it every day for years at a time, and Cassie couldn’t sit still long enough to make it work.

They'd barely been talking. He didn't want to be stuck here any more than she did, but it wasn't that much different from his time living rough growing up--aside from the vicious and carnivorous reptiles everywhere--but he'd be lying if he said he wasn't glad he was with Cassie, if he had to be here. Not that she was trapped with him, but that he wouldn't spend his last days alone, worried about what had happened to her during the splinter. He’d seen her when the light ate them up, saw her as the world faded out around them and the pain set in, but he hadn’t been able to see her in the longer-than-usual trip; he could have landed alone and never known what happened to her.

How do you work that into a conversation, though?

"It's not so bad."

"Not so bad? We're trapped in the Land of the Lost. We're the only two people in existence. It's only going to get worse from here. And we have no idea when we're gonna be saved--if at all. How can you possibly think this is "not bad"?"

"I've got you."

That wasn't what she was expecting, clearly, and a complex string of emotions crossed her face--the old soft fondness he missed, and it stabbed his heart to see it again, then confusion, fear, something that looked like mutinous disagreement, and finally, a terrible closed-off look that made her unreadable. Cassie had never been unreadable to him before.

It worried him.

"Whether we're rescued or not, we've got to assume this is long term at this point," she said. "We need a more permanent shelter."

"We?"

"It's always been "we", Cole."

"I thought--never mind."

"What?" She finally looked at him again when he didn't answer, and repeated herself, her voice softer and warmer, and it was that more than anything that got him to say it. "What, Cole?"

"Is it really so bad? Being here with me?"

Cassie pulled back a little, surprised, and realized for the first time that she'd been hurting him, with her anger and her fear and her defensiveness. It was strange, and it threw her off; Cole was always so tough, the eternal survivor. She didn't think anything she could do would hurt him.

But his eyes were hurt, soft and tender as he looked at her. And she thawed a little, unwound just a bit. "No, that part's not bad. Though maybe being with me is."

Cole came away from the fire and took her hands, something he'd never done before, and that threw her, too. "No time spent with you is a bad time."

Something shivering and fragile opened up in her chest, and it took her a minute to remember what it was called. Hope. He was giving her hope.

Cassie pushed his hair out of his face the way she did the day he exploded himself to save her and somehow survived it, and for just a moment, she felt like her old, caring self. He closed his eyes for just a second when she did, and turned his face just a little into her hand. She thought for a moment that he might kiss her palm, but his lips barely brushed the ingrained dirt there.

Still, it was something. Something they hadn't had in weeks--months. The spark of their old connection, still there.

The need to confess ran through her like cold water, and her hand shook on his cheek. "I thought I was dead before, when I wound up in the future--in your time. I thought that something important had died even though the rest of me lived, anyway."

"You thought? You don't think now?"

"No. Now I know I'm still alive." 

Cole wanted to kiss her. He always wanted to kiss her, really, but now was different--stronger. Newer. He almost did, but he could see that she was battling something, discovering something, and he didn't want to get in the way of that. She was coming back to him. 

That was enough, for now.

\---

Day 28:

Cassie lugged the water up the long steep walk to the cave they'd made their own, the place they'd turned from a stale and disgusting, but abandoned, animal den into something like a home. Water was nearby, but down the slope, and they'd had to invent buckets to bring it up.

And Cole had been sick.

Some toothy monstrosity had separated them a few days ago when they were out on a hunt and even though they'd only been out of each other's sight a few minutes, when she'd found him, he was covered in blood and pale and swearing. The injury had looked worse than it was--Cole was a bleeder--but they didn't have anything even vaguely sanitary to treat it with, and Cassie suspected the dinosaur had a mouth full of bacteria to make it worse. Within the day, his leg around the wound had been swollen and sickly red. Within two, he had a fever.

By the third day, he'd been unconscious with fever, and that had gone on and on and on. She'd cried about it last night, begging him to wake up, yelling at him to fight. This morning she'd tried to lower the fever by using up the last of their water to cool his skin.

Today, as she made it back to the cave and her eyes adjusted to the dimness inside, the first thing she saw was Cole. Awake. Sitting up. She made some noise that wasn't a word, dropped the bucket and sloshed half the water out of it, and ran to him.

She didn't think she was the sort to tumble into someone's arms anymore, she thought she was harder than that now, but there she was, tripping over herself to get to him. He'd been trying to get on his feet, but he gave up when she rushed him, and held out his arms to catch her. 

"You're alive," she half-whispered, half-sobbed into his neck. "You're awake and you're alive."

Her heart was pounding, her hands shaking, but she still had a doctor's training ground into her bones, and she pulled away to check every inch of him. His skin was still warm, but going down; most of the sweat from last night had dried. He was pale, thin, his scruff long since turned to a full beard and his hair still stuck to his head in weird tangles, but his eyes were clear and his hands were steady.

"You're alive," she said again, wonderingly this time. She hadn't really believed he had a chance. She'd wanted to, but she knew the odds.

"So're you," he said back, like he had when she was sure he was dead before. There was some haunted look in his eyes, from a dream or from waking up alone.

And all at once, she was kissing him. She hadn't planned it. Hadn't thought about it at all--since he got sick, anyway. But it was the only way she could get the emotions across when words failed her.

They fit together like long-lost puzzle pieces, his hands fitting exactly in the curve of her waist, hers sliding around his wide shoulders like they were made for that, and since he was still half-reclining, when he pulled her close she molded herself over top of him. Their bones aligned perfectly, all the dips and hollows in the right places. Effortless.

It wasn't a gentle kiss--neither of them had much gentleness just then, when they had to verify how alive they were, how they were still together. But there was tenderness in the stormy passion, and yearning. And long-deferred wanting.

It might've gone on forever--or gone deeper--but Cole was still weak, and when they broke for air, he coughed and shook both of them with the lingering wheeze it caused. Cassie scrambled off his chest, but he held her hand, and when he’d caught his breath, he kissed her knuckles and pulled her close again.

"Not a bad return to the world," he said, and he touched her cheek, pushed his fingertips back into her hair.

"I was sure you'd be dead when I got back. I waited as long as I could. I never thought--"

He laughed, a quick bark that ended in a wheeze. "I'm harder to kill than that."

She lifted up and looked down on him, her hand on his chest and his hand wrapped around her forearm the way they'd sat before, a hundred years ago, it seemed, when splintering was killing him and they didn't have a cure yet. "I'm glad you are."

"I love you," he said, as if he'd always said it, as if it wasn't that big a deal, and his eyes were already drifting closed again. But her voice was caught in her throat and all she could do was snuggle into his side, his hand still around her wrist, his other looped around her shoulders.

"I love you, too," she whispered back.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's the smut.

Day 41:

Cole never would have guessed that the first night he spent with Cassie--the first night when they did anything other than sleeping-- would be a cold night in a cave with weird creatures howling and hooting outside, but there it was. And there they were. The firelight was warmer than the fire actually was, and it made her glow. Everything about Cassie was golden, more so since the sunlight here had tanned her skin across her shoulders, her chest, the upper curve of her breasts. They'd been kissing, as they did fairly often since he'd woken from that fever, and she was nestled in his lap.

And she pulled the straps of her tank top down off her shoulders, pointedly. 

It had been almost a month since he almost died of monster-poison-fever, and he’d gotten the feeling that Cassie was building up to something, that she was coming back from something. And here she was.

He pushed his hands up under the hem of her shirt, watching to see what she’d do. Her skin was warm and smooth, his hands cold from the oncoming winter and the night, and she shivered--and then leaned into them. They’d both grown thin and muscular since landing here, and his hands went so far around her waist; there had never been much of her, but what was here, what came back from wherever she’d been lost was smaller still, compact, strong and lithe and beautiful.

Cole moved his hands up further.

Cassie leaned down and kissed him, and there was such heat there that this time he didn’t have to decide to move his hands, they moved on their own, one to cup her breast, free under her shirt since they’d had to use the elastic of her bra for some makeshift thing a while ago, the nipped hardening against his palm, and the other sliding around her back, over her hip, to take a hold on her ass. 

She sighed and gasped and wound her arms around his neck; she’d wanted this for so long, and she almost couldn’t believe that it was this easy--all she had to do was give him a look and he knew that it was time. He kissed down her neck and across her shoulder, back to her breastbone, burying his face in her cleavage as she found a rhythm against him. 

Cole found her nipple as if he’d been made to find it, and sucked hard on it, taking half her tit into his mouth. She gasped and pushed closer to him still, and he pushed her shirt off and she pulled at his. It wasn’t long until they were nude, glowing in the firelight, and the whole world was only what was safe and cozy here in their cave. Cassie pushed him back, down onto the bedroll, and positioned herself over him. His tip fit right into her notch like they were made from the same stuff; god, she was to hot and slick and ready, it made him harder yet as she locked her eyes with his and held them both there, her hands on his chest, his on her waist, their breathing fast and wanting.

And then she plunged down on him, all the way until their bones ground together, and arched her back and threw her head back until her hair brushed his hands, and he couldn’t be still anymore. Almost before she’d hit the base, he folded up around her, his arms all the way around her waist, one bracing her back, the other grabbing at her hip on the opposite side, and he pulled her up and brought her back down again. They both shuddered with the force of it, and she rolled along his length a few times, holding onto his shoulders so hard her nails left spots of sharp heat in his skin.

Cole’s mouth was on her neck and jaw again, and she rode him hard as he crushed her to him, her hands so tangled in his hair she was sure she’d never get free. Now that he was inside her, hard and hot and filling, she wanted him even more; she had a good imagination, and this was better than all the stories she’d told herself since they met.

She called out with each thrust, and he whispered her name a hundred times, louder each time. They found each other’s eyes again just as he lifted her enough to lay her back and get on top of her without separating from her, and she smiled, and he smiled back, and he paused long enough to kiss her, long and slow and with increasing heat as he pushed back into her, harder, deeper, faster, until they were both breathing too hard again to kiss and she arched under him again. Her calls had gotten higher, tighter, and her eyes were closed. Her muscles, too, were tighter, and he was one giant live-wire, every nerve in his body alive with the feel of her.

They were so close. He lifted one of her legs to get closer to her; she pulled his head back to her hard, hard nipples, grabbed his ass with one hand in a fierce hold.

So close.

And then she heaved and rolled him back over, off the bedroll and onto the hard stone floor and he didn’t even care--she was a fountain of golden light over him, and she slammed into him to ride out the blazing fierceness of her climax, over and over and over. He came so hard that he called her name loud enough that it echoed, and she called his back, and finally she was still, her hands grabbing onto his arms like vices, her hips ground down into his so hard that he felt every contraction of her tunnel down every length of his shaft, and it was like the whole world was condensed to that one place where they were joined, hot, sharp pleasure pouring back and forth between them.

After what felt like forever, she relaxed all at once and collapsed down over his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her, and they laid like that for a long time, still coupled, as her muscles slowly released him and he slowly came down.

It was almost dawn when she lifted her head, and traced her hands over all the lines of his face with such wonder in her expression that something hitched in his chest. He pushed her hair back; he’d never loved someone so much.

“I love you,” she said, and he kissed her. He couldn’t go again quite yet, but he had hands, and she could. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” she said over and over again as he ran his hands and his lips over every inch of her. His fingertips found her still wet and ready, and when he slipped them between her folds she hissed in a sharp breath and took his shaft in her palm. She held onto him like a lifeline as he slipped over her, into her, along the edges and depths of all her folds. He kissed her everywhere. And he found the hot, hard nub of her clit with his thumb as he pushed his fingers deep inside her.

She came again in shuddering pleasure, and by the time she regained use of her hands legs, he was ready to go again, and she rode him mercilessly until they could hardly move and were so raw with love that the barest touch set them off again. 

The didn’t leave the cave for two days.

\---

Day 59:

Cassie felt it first, the weird tingling pull that meant the splinter was coming. She’d just had time to grab her arm and look at him when he felt it, too. Thankfully, they were out scavenging food, not naked in the cave, and he grinned at her with a rush of wild abandon.

“I told you she’d find us.”

Cassie threw herself into his arms just as the pull went from a sharp but unfocused sensation to a violent and painful jerk. She was in his arms when the light got them; she was in his arms when it ate up everything--

\--and she was in his arms when they landed, dirty and thin and exhausted, in the future, both of them in his chair as the Machine wound down.

“Thank god,” Jones said, but they barely heard her. Cassie pushed back from him enough to see his face, and smiled with crazy triumph that he returned. The future was hard, but at least they didn’t have dinosaurs. 

Jones was saying something, but Cassie swooped down to kiss him, and that’s all he knew for a while.


End file.
